Chronologies
China - Korea
Chronology from Jan 2008 to Mar 2008
: Korea Fund Ratings reports that Chinese equity funds have lost W12 trillion over the past five months. Korean investors represented 32 percent of total funds invested from overseas, according to Meritz Securities.
: Ma Ying-jeou is elected president of the Republic of China on a platform that stresses economic performance pledges similar to those of President Lee.
: Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan makes his first visit as foreign minister to China to plan for a likely May state visit by President Lee to Beijing.
: The Korean Consumer Agency reports that over 10 different cases of spoiled food products from China have gone unreported in the Korean media.
: Korean producers of the film “Crossing,” which is based on the story of North Korean refugees who escape to China, hold a press conference in Seoul.
: South Korea’s Business Institute of Sustainable Development announces that W5.5 trillion ($5.5 billion) in lost productivity occurred in 2007 as a result of “yellow dust” from China.
: Korea Development Institute releases a report describing the transition of China from a production base to an export market for Korean manufacturing products.
: Korea, China, and Japan hold a fourth round of talks on a trilateral investment agreement.
: South Korea announces that the China has agreed to cooperate to recover the remains of An Jung-geun, the Korean independence fighter who assassinated Japan’s first Resident General Ito Hirobumi in China in 1909. An was executed in China be Japanese military officials at Ryojun prison.
: Prosecutors announce the arrest and indictment of a former LG Electronics engineer for industrial espionage by stealing and leaking flat-screen TV technology to a Chinese competitor.
: Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) announces that it has signed a $15.5 million contract with Guangdong Power Engineering Corporation to export nuclear technology through 2013 for reactors at Yangjian, Guangdong Province, which are based on the Korean Uljin plants.
: President Lee names former South Korean Ambassador to China Kim Ha-joong as his first minister of unification.
: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has “cordial and friendly talks” during a visit to the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang with Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming.
: Lee Myung-bak inaugurated as new South Korean president; meets with Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan.
: China hosts a bilateral meeting between Six-Party Talks negotiators Christopher Hill and Kim Kye-gwan to discuss issues preventing North Korea from providing a declaration of nuclear-related facilities, programs, and materials as pledged under the Oct. 4 and Feb. 13, 2007 six-party agreements.
: Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade Senior Research Fellow Kim Do-hoon says that Hong Kong and China are likely to be South Korea’s best FTA partners based on his study of the effects on local industry.
: South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy announces that the government has decided to implement measures to support South Korean investors in China that are planning to withdraw from the country.
: Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Ning Fukui says Chinese-South Korean relations are “at a new starting point” in an interview at his office in Seoul.
: Senior Chinese Communist Party official Wang Jiarui meets Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang to discuss the Six-Party Talks and other issues in Sino-DPRK relations.
: The Bank of Korea releases a report concluding that an economic bubble is unlikely to occur in China.
: The Korean Customs Service reports that China has displaced Japan in 2007 as the largest exporter of goods to South Korea.
: South Korean companies in China face toughening government regulations and decreasing incentives to operate there, spurring nighttime departures by some South Korean executives and employees.
: President-elect Lee Myung Bak meets Chinese special envoy Wang Yi during a visit to South Korea to consult on future prospects for Six-Party Talks.
: Forty illegal laborers, including 13 Korean ethnic workers from China, are trapped and burned in a cold-storage warehouse under construction in Incheon, 50 miles south of Seoul.